


Whatever It Takes

by mynameisnemo



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Depression, M/M, Sibling Bonding, post 4x12, spoilers for S4 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1429396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mynameisnemo/pseuds/mynameisnemo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quiet moment in the aftermath of realising what's wrong with Ian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever It Takes

**Author's Note:**

> Something I wrote after watching the episode last night. There might be some triggering content in here, but nothing that we haven't seen/heard on the show.

“Who the fuck broke the lock on my door?”

Mickey glances up at Mandy as she goes storming past the kitchen table, murder written on her face. 

“I said,” she yells louder, “who the fuck-”

He reaches over and pushes the new handle and lock, still in its package, towards her. “Needed to borrow your laptop.”

She stands motionless for a second, mouth hanging open, then jerks a chair out and throws herself into it. 

He takes a drag from the cigarette burning in the ashtray and goes back to hunt and pecking some bullshit ten syllable word with too many consonants strung together onto the computer. 

“Are you fucking studying Mikhail Milkovich?”

He hits the enter key extra hard for emphasis and casts a glare over the table. There's a stack of books to his right, paper and pen in front of him, the computer sitting behind that, an over flowing ashtray and a half full pack of smokes sitting to his left and four empty Bud bottles next to that. He takes a slow slip of the next to last of his newly bought six pack and smacks his lips together. “Nope, learning to fuckin' tango.”

She huffs out something between a sigh and a laugh and reaches across to pick up the top sheet of paper. Squinting, she stares at it, then tosses it back to land on the keyboard. “Points off for penmanship.”

He looks at the page covered in chicken-scratch and shrugs. “Not like I gotta turn it in for a grade.”

She shakes her head and picks up what's left of his cigarette, taking the last drag of it before stubbing it out. 

He picks up the back and shakes another out, fucking new guy clerk at the Kash and Grab only had softpacks and it's driving him nuts. 

It's quiet for a moment, just the flick of his lighter and the sound of the heater in his room kicking on again. 

“'Insomnia, increased energy, low attention span, increased sex drive'.” Her voice lilts up at the end like it's a question but he knows it's not. He knows she's just trying to get him to talk about it in her normal Mandy way. 

He shrugs again. “This shit's complicated. There's a lot of stuff that could be signs and a lot that could just be normal.” 

Mandy steals the cigarette from him and takes a drag, then waves it at the table. “And you couldn't just Wikipedia it?”

It's suddenly hard to make eye contact. “Had to go get one of those wireless air cards. Figured I might as well hit the library while I was out.” 

“You have a library card?”

He just stares at the table and doesn't tell her about how awkward it felt filling out the form to sign up for one. How he had to ask for help to find the psych books. That he just grabbed a stack that looked likely because between the store, the wireless place, and the library, he kept wondering if it was taking too long. If Ian was OK with being left alone in the house so long. “I just want to know how to make him better.” 

“And you couldn't just ask the Gallaghers? They've been dealing with this shit a long time, you know.”

“You heard that shit Fiona said,” he says, slamming his beer down on the table hard enough to make it foam. “They just want to stick him in some psych ward and forget about him.”

“Did Ian ever tell you about Monica?”

He sighs, scrubs a hand over his face and lights another cigarette. It doesn't look like he's getting the one he just lit back. “Look, he said some shit about her being crazy or whatever but we didn't really-” talk much, he thinks but doesn't finish the sentence. 

“It was really fucked up Mick. She tried to kill herself on Thanksgiving. Cut her wrists in the kitchen while everyone was sitting at the table. Right there with the kids in the house and everything. Ian said there was blood everywhere, gushing out of her arms like some horror movie or something.” 

“Jesus Mandy!” He can't stop the images that come to mind of Ian bleeding out somewhere. He's had these images in his head many times but before it was always a fight, or in some desert somewhere. It was never something Ian did on purpose. It was never something he thought Ian would do on purpose. But now... “I'm not gonna let that happen.”

“Mick, if he gets really low-”

“I'm not letting it happen.” He's yelling suddenly, standing up fast enough to make his chair tip behind him and crash to the floor. “No fucking way.” 

“What are you gonna do, Mick? Watch him all the time?”

“I'm gonna do whatever I have to,” he breaks in. “If I gotta watch him, make him get in the shower, eat. If I gotta knock over a pharmacy or shove his pills down his throat. I don't care what it takes.” 

She reaches out but pulls back before she catches his arm. “You're nineteen, Mick. He could be like this for the rest of his life. It's not just something you can beat up and make it go away.” 

He scrubs his hands over his face again, hissing when one of his scabs catches. Fucking Terry. 

“Whatever it takes. For as long as it takes. I'm not gonna give up on him, not gonna just drop him off at some hospital and hope they give enough of a damn to notice that something's wrong if he does get bad.” He picks up his chair and puts it back at the table, slumping into it and feeling exhausted suddenly. 

They sit in silence for a while. The heater kicks off and back on again and the laptop fan hums to life. They smoke through the rest of the pack, then Mandy gets up and stalks out. 

Mickey just sits there for a moment, staring at the blur of words on the screen, telling him the definition of the word he was looking up when Mandy came in but not really reading it. 

He looks up when she comes stomping back in. 

“You're serious about this. You're gonna read all these books about head shrinking and stick with him through the good times and the bad and all that shit?”

“Fuck. Yes, Mandy, yes. I mean, we're not getting fucking married or anything.” He wonders for a second if Ian wants that, if he ever might want it. Wonders if he can go through with it, even though his last sham of a wedding ceremony still leaves a bad taste in his mouth when he thinks about it. Even if it is something Ian might want one day, it's too much to think about right now. “I'm gonna do this and I'm going to do it right. Whatever it takes.” 

“You really love him, don't you?” She's giving him that look, the one where her whole face gets soft and makes her look like mom and makes him want to punch her. Right in the nose so her piercing gets bloody. 

“Whatever it takes.” 

Of all the people in the world, Mandy has really known him the longest, so she just smiles and sits down again, energetically slamming a fresh pack of smokes and a new six of Bud onto the table. 

“Mandy, what-”

“If I can get Lip Gallagher into college, I can keep my best friend out of a mental hospital. Now give me those notes and I'll try to copy them into something an actual human being can read. No good writing this shit down if no one knows what it says.”

Mickey takes a deep breath and holds it for a second, then straightens up and hands her the stack of paper.


End file.
